Identification

Title

Simulation of a dust-and-rain event across the Red Sea using WRF-Chem

Abstract

We present simulations of a series of dust-and-rain events in July/August 2020 that caused significant loss of life and property over northeast Africa and the Red Sea coast using convection-permitting Weather Research and Forecasting-Chem simulations at 1.5 km horizontal grid spacing coupled with prognostic dust and aerosol scheme together with a double-moment cloud microphysical scheme. The model generally captures the optical properties and vertical profiles of dust but has difficulty reproducing the seasonal dust plumes that originate over northeast Africa and reach the western Arabian Peninsula through the Tokar gap. Overlapping of synoptic events with local, diurnal-scale, convective features caused continuous rainfall over the study domain in July/August 2020. The model well simulates the synoptically-driven clouds over the ocean (similar to 4-8 km) and daytime deep convective clouds over the land but cannot reproduce cumulus clouds over the ocean advected from land, which leads to some biases in simulating peak rainfall rates. Although our simulations do not explicitly consider aerosol particles as ice nuclei, the model reproduces the cirrus clouds found at similar to 10-15 km height during the study period. Simulations with a planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme better represented the diurnal profile of surface temperature and winds, as well as the rainfall distribution, than without using a PBL scheme. Dust generally enhanced rainfall during the synoptic rain event through indirect effects but suppressed rainfall during sea-breeze-induced convective events through dust direct effects by weakening the sea-breeze circulation.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7mk6hx5

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-07-27T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact